Lacrosse's Mount Rushmore: Who Ya Got?

The question of Peyton Manning's legacy, comments by LeBron
James and Kobe Bryant and the recent Presidents Day
weekend — fueled by the need to populate 24-hour sports
news cycles — has led to a lot of talk about Mount
Rushmore. As in, "Do you put Peyton on the NFL's Mount Rushmore?"
and "What four players would constitute the NBA's Mount
Rushmore?"

Admittedly, my frame of reference stretches only back to the
late 1980s. I'm sure Lacrosse Magazine columnist Bill
Tanton might espouse men like Jim Brown and Jimmy Lewis, widely
considered among the best players ever despite a comparatively
fleeting involvement with the sport at Syracuse and Navy,
respectively. Women's lacrosse historians might look to a pre-Title
IX era standout like Elizabeth Richey (22 straight years on both
the U.S. field hockey and women's lacrosse teams) or someone like
Karen Emas, who held the NCAA scoring record for nearly 20 years
before Adams came along.

But from this editor's chair, you can't find four more
transcendent figures than Adams, Amonte Hiller, Gait and Rabil.

Adams embodied the Aussie invasion of the 1990s. Her
entertaining style and ridiculous stick-handling ability gave her
mass appeal. It didn't matter if you were a men's lacrosse fan who
never paid attention to the women's game. You knew the name Jen
Adams. After graduating from Maryland as the NCAA's all-time
leading scorer in 2001, she went on to lead Australia to an
historic victory over the host U.S. in the 2005 Women's World Cup
and now is the coach at Loyola.

Amonte Hiller likewise was a wizard in women's lacrosse, with
unbridled athleticism that even her brother, former NHL standout
Tony Amonte, admitted surpassed his. That same tenacity has
followed her to the sidelines as coach of seven-time NCAA champion
Northwestern. She was a trendsetter as a player at Maryland and
with Team USA (her formula for success on draw controls is a trade
secret) and is a trendsetter as a coach in Evanston.

Gait made lacrosse mainstream. When he and twin brother Paul
Gait exploded onto the scene at Syracuse and in what was then the
Major Indoor Lacrosse League (now National Lacrosse League), their
highlight-reel abilities made lacrosse fit for TV. The Air Gait
remains the most iconic goal in NCAA lacrosse history. And while
Canadians always had a place in the college game (Hall of Famer
Mike French lit it up for Cornell in the 1970s), the Gait brothers
(and Tom Marechek) really forced coaches to look north of the
border for talent. (And we all know how that trend has evolved in
the new millennium.)

Rabil is debatable. He recently became lacrosse's first
"million-dollar man," as dubbed by Bloomberg News. He's certainly
the face of the game right now with the Boston Cannons and Team
USA. Unlike Adams, Amonte Hiller and Gait -- whose creative
influence has spread to the women's game as the coach at Syracuse
-- Rabil has not shown any desire to coach. He's more interested in
the business aspect of lacrosse, which speaks to the sport's
evolution, as does his desire to one day own or manage a pro
lacrosse franchise.

"I want to continue to grow lacrosse as one of the sport's
ambassadors where we're trying to take it into the mainstream
spotlight," Rabil told me last spring. "I want to do my part in my
generation and set it up like Gary Gait, Tom Marechek, Dave
Pietramala and Quint Kessenich did for guys like me."